Squalicorax Pristodontus.

It was tricky to get a really good look at it, as the water was murky and the beast tended to keep moving very rapidly. It was huge (about 6 feet in length), so huge in fact that at certain points, the river was almost too narrow for it to turn around in. The aspect that most people commented on was how fast it was moving. So fast that, no matter where you stood along the stretch of river running through the centre of town, you would only have to wait a matter of minutes before it would be gliding past you. The tabloids were calling it ‘Geordie Jaws’, which was a predictably ignorant and inappropriate name (everyone knows that a Geordie is from Tyneside not Wearside). Locals however, had affectionately named it ‘Cuthbert’ or ‘Cuth’, after the saint for whom Durham’s famous Cathedral was built.

The authorities were utterly mind-boggled. A few doctoral researchers and a Marine Biology professor from the university were drafted in to try and give the clueless local authorities some idea of what it was they were dealing with exactly. But the boffins were equally baffled. How on earth did it get there? How could it survive in such a bitterly cold, shallow and narrow stretch of water? What was it eating for sustenance? From a scientific point of view, the whole thing was mystifying; they began running what limited tests they could in order to find out a little more about the beast.

Tourism in Durham enjoyed an out of season boost and local businesses were enjoying the benefits. It had captured the imaginations of local young people too; many now sporting home made T-Shirts displaying shark and Cuthbert related puns and slogans. It had energised and excited people all across the region; people who recognised that this was something special, and something important.

It was however fair to say that opinions were divided. It hadn’t taken long before the initial excitement of many turned to fear, and after just two weeks an official campaign was initiated by a concerned local parents group calling itself ‘SharkOut’, who were demanding the ‘removal of the shark’. They argued that it was unsafe to have a large shark swimming through the centre of Durham, and that it should be ‘gotten rid of’, by ‘whatever means necessary’. Local politicians were keen to jump on board, and co-signed a petition which was presented to the local MP. ‘SharkOut’ wanted to know who had put it there and why.

Rumours began circulating that it was the result of some ridiculously elaborate and ill-advised prank on the part of one of the university colleges. Inter-collegiate rivalries had, in the past, caused some major upset; whole buildings had been flooded, steps and handrails had been removed, college lawns defaced. Such a precedent meant that the rumour gained some credibility. But few people truly believed that a bunch of students could actually acquire and transport quite such a large shark into Durham.

After three weeks, just as the shark’s presence was starting to seem commonplace to many, academics from the university held a press conference at which many high profile environmental Journalists were in attendance. Based on the limited tests that they were able to carry out, it had been ascertained that the shark was a member of a species ‘long-presumed to be extinct’ and thus ‘highly-endangered’. ‘Squalicorax Pristodontus’, from the cretaceous period; a predator but also a scavenger. No other shark, extinct or otherwise, would be able to survive in such conditions, they insisted. They assured everyone that Cuthbert’s presence in Durham was ‘not representative of a threat to public safety’. No one needed to fear the shark.

The news went viral and the shockwaves spread globally; a prehistoric beast was alive and well, and had set up camp in North East England’s most historically rich city. Representatives from Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund all called for the safety of the shark to be ensured by the government. ‘SharkOut’ all but disbanded and the local councillors co-signed a petition pledging their support for ‘Cuthbert’ which was then presented to the local MP. It was suddenly a Green issue, and the Prime Minister himself visited Durham, seeing the shark with his own eyes, and pledging his support for the safety of this ‘miracle shark’.

The Prime Minister’s visit was a turning point. Tourism, which had been steadily on the rise anyway, shot up like a rocket, and eventually so too did house prices. Durham became one of the hottest tourist locations in the country almost overnight, as people flocked to see the miracle shark for themselves. Local businesses began trading almost exclusively in ‘Cuthbert’ related souvenirs; clothing, cups, jewellery, scale models, calendars, if you could fit a picture of a shark on it, they were selling it. The once popular ornamental Cathedrals were slowly but surely replaced with ornamental sharks. The riverside became the centre of Durham, with trendy new cafes and restaurants appearing all the time, in which patrons could sit and eat and drink and watch Cuthbert swimming by. Such was the demand that an underwater themed nightclub opened in a converted boathouse looking out onto the river. Riverside properties in Durham city were soon among the most sought after in the region. It was rumoured that Charlotte Church had bought one, as had Sting. Many of the local people who had lived in Durham city for years, found themselves unable to afford the heightened rent prices, and some moved away. Lots of previously Green riverside land was sold to make room for more housing developments and apartment complexes. The population of Durham city centre swelled, as the steep, densely wooded areas on the riverbanks made way for new theme bars, and living quarters for more upmarket new residents and the picturesque beauty of the city slowly but surely diminished.

The police had all but removed their initial restrictions on going near the river, and although no one was able to go onto the river on boats, they were now allowed to frequent the riverbanks, providing they didn’t actually go into the water. The university rowing teams were more than a little disgruntled at having to now train in Sunderland, but it was a small price to pay for the boom it had created in the local economy. The local boat rental places simply diversified; tripling their profits thanks to the overwhelming demand for dining establishments looking out onto the river. All the while, the shark continued to move tirelessly back and forth along the thin, river Peninsula.

As time went on, the local residents seemed to get used to him; most of them not even bothering to look out for him as they went about their business in town, grunting disapprovingly as they navigated their way around the heaving masses of tourists which now swamped the city. Standing mouths agape on the riverbanks and bridges. But for the locals, Cuthbert’s presence was to them no more worthy of their gaze than the 900 year old Cathedral on the hillside, which they had happily ignored on a daily basis for years.

One morning, almost eleven moths after the shark first appeared in the river, a family visiting Durham from Cardiff made their way down to the river bank to try and get a photo of Cuthbert swimming by. The three of them marched towards the riverbank dressed in matching Cuthbert T-Shirts. It was very early, but the riverbank was already starting to fill up with tourists. They positioned themselves on one of the many sets of steps formerly used by rowers to get their boats onto the river. Dad stood on the top step, and Mum walked down to the bottom step, just inches from the cold, murky water. It lapped against the soles of her shoes as she posed, waiting for Cuthbert to swim by behind her.

“Go on, go and stand by the river with Mummy…” said Dad to his young son who was seemingly quite nervous at the prospect “…quickly before we miss Cuthbert”. The toddler cautiously made his way down the steps towards his mother who was waiting for him at the bottom, kneeling down with open arms.

“Come on, come and get your photo taken with Mummy” said Mum. Dad looked through the camera viewfinder at a black and white representation of the scene in front of him. He attempted to get it in focus as his son slowly dawdled down the steps.

“Quickly now, Cuthbert’s on his way” Dad could see the shark approaching from the left; its fin smoothly cutting the water, leaving an ever increasing V-shaped trail in its wake. His son had finally reached the bottom and was now reluctantly posing with his Mum, looking decidedly unhappy. Dad looked through the viewfinder once more at his smiling wife, and his son now on the verge of tears, but could no longer see the fin in the background. He lowered the camera and inspected the river for any sign of the shark, seemingly to no avail.

“Damn, I think we’ve just missed him” said Dad.

“What do you mean?” said Mum turning to inspect the water behind her.

“Well, I can’t see him anymore, he must have just snuck by, we’ll have to wait for him to come back around” said Dad. Things got very quiet as the tourists slowly stopped talking and pondered Cuthbert’s sudden absence. Just as Dad was about to approach the river, Cuthbert’s fin re-emerged behind his wife and son, and the tourists seemed to let out a synchronised sigh of relief. But something was different, Cuthbert’s fin was seemingly a lot larger than before and his course had altered; he was now heading directly towards the section of the riverbank where the mother and child had been posing.

“Hang on a minute, this isn’t right” said Dad.

“What is it?” said Mum.

“N… Nooo! Run!!” said Dad, but before he could get the words out the shark had emerged from the water, somehow twice its usual size. Its’ gaping jaws seized the mother and child in one swift movement and violently dragged them back into the freezing cold water. The tourists gasped and screamed and the father cried out and ran down the steps towards the river, but he was helpless; the shark had taken them. All he could do was stare into the murky water, now stained red.

Everyone agreed; it was terrible tragedy, not just for that family, but for the whole city. Nobody could quite believe what had happened. Local shops began removing all shark related paraphernalia out of respect for the two lives lost, and a minutes silence was held at noon on the day of the funeral, indicated by the chiming of the Cathedral bells. A tasteful monument was commissioned to commemorate the loss of the mother and child to the beast. News reports asked politicians and celebrities to comment on the tragedy, and their responses were played over the top of footage of a mass bonfire of Cuthbert related memorabilia organized by the local population. It was a symbolic event, which provided some welcome catharsis to the shocked and devastated city. Tourism nose-dived. The police reinstated their strict ban on going near the river, not that anyone wanted to go near now anyway. The public were even avoiding the use of the bridges, instead opting to take the much longer but safer land route wherever possible. All the while the shark continued to swim tirelessly back and forth along the short stretch of river, in plain sight, as if to mock the mourning humans. No one knew quite who to blame. “The family should never have been standing so near to the river” said some. “The police should never have opened up the riverbanks” said others. “The academics should never have declared the shark safe in the first place” said the police. In the end there was only one catch-all vessel for blame and hatred; Cuthbert.

‘SharkOut’ re-emerged and presented a petition, co-signed by several local councillors, to the local MP. It called for the urgent execution of the shark and its removal from the city of Durham. Local authorities were faced with the task of attempting to remove Cuthbert from the river. Any lingering concerns for the shark’s rarity or welfare were dispensed with after the international media uproar surrounding the death of the mother and child. The concern of a few environmental groups, as to the correct means with which to humanely put-down a shark were suppressed or resoundingly ignored.

Armed police were drafted in to shoot the beast; nothing like this had ever really happened before so there was no protocol to refer to. One cold Sunday morning, five marksmen took up their positions on Elvet footbridge, with their sights set on the usual path of the shark. The moment Cuthbert came into sight they opened fire; their weapons firing several rounds into the shark’s body. But Cuthbert didn’t stop swimming. The marksmen reloaded and waited for him to come back around, exchanging nervous glances, none of them wishing to comment on the seeming powerlessness of their guns against the shark. Once more Cuthbert swam directly beneath them; once more they opened fire, their accuracy perfect, but to no avail. The police chief watched intently as they made their third, fourth and fifth attempts. If he hadn’t know any better he’d have sworn he saw the bullets pass straight through the shark as if it weren’t really there at all.

Journalists had not been allowed near the river, but somehow the story was all over one of the national tabloids the next day. The headline went something along the lines of “We’re gonna need a better Bobbie: police embarrassment as bumbling marksmen fail to kill Geordie Jaws”. The next plan was to try poisoning the shark; they threw chum laced with cyanide and arsenic into the river, but the shark’s relentless path didn’t waver. Back and forth it kept swimming, completely ignoring the bait that had been left. Naturally the papers had a field day with this debacle. After trying harpoons and even plastic explosives, the authorities threw caution to the wind and decided to electrocute the shark to death by charging the whole river with several hundred thousand volts. A giant industrial generator was brought in to be used on the stretch of river that Cuthbert inhabited; it was successful in killing pretty much every other shred of life left in the river, without even causing the shark to flinch. On it swam, back and forth, over and over. This went on for weeks. Inevitably a would-be vigilante member of the public was eaten alive trying to be the hero who killed the beast. Nothing anyone tried seemed to have any effect whatsoever. The broadsheet papers had no idea how they were supposed to cover the story. How on earth could anyone begin to try and rationally explain a situation like this? Once again the experts were baffled. Surely this thing wasn’t really invincible?

Property prices in Durham plummeted, most noticeably near to the river. Few dared live there anymore, even fewer could stand looking out of their window every morning to see that thing swimming around, impervious. The cafes and restaurants closed or went out of business, and many of the housing developments which had been initiated during the boom were abandoned. The riverbank became a ghost town of abandoned shops, apartments and building sites. A giant protective fence was erected to stop people from getting anywhere near to the river. Every river crossing in town was fortified. Naturally the bridges and river crossings became suicide hot-spots.

Many of the locals who had moved away, moved back, but into a different, scarred version of the city that they had originally been priced out of. The overall population plunged, as only those very loyal to the city or with no other option stuck around. Niche tourism began to emerge, with special ‘grim-fascination’ trips bringing bus loads of Goths and occultists into the city. One Christian sect declared the shark to be the second coming of Jesus Christ and began making regular pilgrimages to Durham, in order to Worship Cuthbert.

Ultimately, people learned to live with, if not accept or understand the shark. The city is different now, but life goes on regardless. Just as the shark persists, tirelessly and relentlessly; its path never alters and its dedication never wavers.

Jumped, or Fell.

It was the strangest thing. There we were, laughing together on the terrace. Bathing in the orange light of sunrise, and yet, I had no idea what either of us were laughing at.

This one night not so long ago, I was up late working on an essay, when I heard a knock on my bedroom window. Given that it was 3am, this worried me slightly. I surreptitiously peered through a gap in the curtains and saw my friend Mat standing in the back yard, chewing on a finger nail and looking distinctly disheveled.             

“What the hell are you doing here?”

“Shhhhh, I’ll explain in a minute, let me in.”

“I’ll open the front door”

“No, no. Let me through the window, I don’t want anyone to see me”

Reluctantly I acquiesced. Mat was frantic, mumbling incoherently about walking a dog and judging from the eyes, almost certainly as high as a kite. Something serious had clearly happened, but I was having difficulty finding out what.          

“Listen, I really need you to come with me now, I found something in Fowler’s woods. I need to show you it.”

“What? What is it?”

“I can’t tell you. I have to show you.”

“It’s three in the morning Mat, can’t it wait?”

“Absolutely not.” 

Clambering out of my own bedroom window as per Mat’s request, This familiar foreboding feeling came over me; like I was about to make an absolutely massive mistake. It was freezing cold outside and Mat was wearing a flimsy little t-shirt. We walked through town, navigating the drunken, often hostile masses as they staggered from establishment to establishment, and eventually we made our way down to the riverbank. From there, it got pretty dark pretty quickly, and I began to lose faith that Mat had any idea where this thing was. But after about 20 minutes of clambering over fences, and trudging through mud, we reached it. At first it seemed like a couple of bin liners. I was about ready to turn around and head home, but Mat used a phone to shine some light on it. Slowly, we crept closer until I eventually realized that we were looking at a sleeping bag; a sleeping bag which appeared to have a something body-shaped inside of it.     

“Jesus Christ, wh… what is it?”

“I found it earlier, when I was walking Thora’s spaniel. It’s a dead person.”

“Wh… Why are you showing it to me? Why didn’t you call someone?”

“Like who?”         

“The police? An ambulance? I don’t know? Anyone!”

“What’s the point? It’s not gonna bring him back to life.”

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me”

I feel like some context is necessary before I continue. Mat and I go way back. We both grew up here in Durham. Mat doesn’t go to my university; we just hang out a lot because this is the town we both still happen to live in. It’s a small town, and when you’ve been around for as long as we have, you get to know everyone and everything. Locally, Mat has a reputation for erratic behavior. As far as I’m concerned, it all traces back to this one Religious Studies lesson. We were about 14.

Mr Tilston was off ill so we had this supply teacher. He was a short, fat, middle-aged bloke who was shaped like a cube. I don’t use the word bloke lightly here. But that’s what he was. Mat was really misbehaving, causing havoc in the classroom, and everyone else was having a really good time enjoying the spectacle. This poor teacher had no idea how to keep Mat under control. Mat was running around the class, singing and shouting, and so there was this inadvertently carnivalesque atmosphere to the whole thing. The teacher was getting so worked up, shouting and balling, and his face kept getting redder and redder. I can remember being freaked out by how much the veins were popping out of his neck and head.

“SIT DOWN!!!” he kept bellowing, to absolutely no avail.

Mat kept on performing, and everyone else kept on laughing. Then all of a sudden, this teacher bloke hunched over and grabbed his arm. It was obvious to me what was happening, even at that tender age. I’d watched Holby City; I knew exactly what a heart attack looked like. The room went completely silent, except for Mat who hadn’t clocked what was going on, and was still messing around with one of the wall displays. Jenny Parks, who, with hindsight, was always pretty diligent, ran outside and started shouting for help. By the time Mrs. Johnston arrived Mat had noticed the suddenly funereal atmosphere and had gone very very pale. Before too long an ambulance came and took this poor supply teacher away. I can remember the scene really vividly. The paramedics were in these pea-green jumpsuits and they carried him away on this weird orange stretcher. I’ll always remember those colours; a blur of pea-green and tangerine. Anyway, by lunchtime news had gotten around school that this supply teacher bloke had died at the hospital. Mat was inconsolable. We tried to help, and to explain, but it was no use. 

“It’s not your fault, it’s years worth of unhealthy living that leads to a heart attack, not one disruptive kid.”

Even the teachers backed us up. Instead of a detention for misbehavior, Mat got special counseling and all sorts, but after that, things were different. We all kind of floated along, as you do, but Mat was carrying this guilt that none of us felt. Even though we were just as complicit in whatever crime had been committed for laughing along. From that point onwards Mat was forever paranoid, assuming the worst in every situation. Having these fantasies about the worst-case scenario all of the time. If someone was late, it was because they’d been in an accident. Or if the phone signal died it was a terrorist attack. We did our best to deal with it, but we were young, and Mat became more and more isolated. People found it too strange to deal with and just lost touch. It’s weird, but I think I’m probably the only one of our old gang who still keeps in contact with Mat. 

Anyway, it was clear to me that night in Fowler’s Wood that Mat was high on something, but I went along with the tall-tale anyway. We stood there looking at this bulging sleeping bag by the light of a mobile phone, and Mat told me there was no point in ringing the police, it wasn’t gonna bring this corpse back to life.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me?” I said as I edged closer to it. I knew Mat was being crazy, but it was dark and I’m not ashamed to say I was pretty scared. I grabbed a longish stick from the ground and started to poke the sleeping bag.

“What’s that gonna do? He’s not gonna wake up, he’s dead.”

“How do you know it’s a ‘he’?” I said quite flippantly.

I continued prodding until eventually I dislodged the balance of something and the bag slowly started to tip towards us. We both screamed and jumped backwards, just as a pile of garbage poured from a hole in the bag. Matt had run off, so I stood in solitary silence for a moment, trying to comprehend what had just happened, then, having seen sense, I approached the bag with confidence. I unzipped it to reveal a load of old rubbish.

“Mat” I shouted “it’s just some garbage. Someone’s been fly-tipping… in an admittedly quite creative way. There’s nothing to worry about”

Mat appeared from behind a tree and walked over to the pile of trash. We both started laughing, and before long we were heading back to town with a spring in our step. 

“Well, I don’t know about you but I’m wide awake” I said.

“Yeah, me too. What time is it?” said Mat.

“It’s about 4am. I have to be up at 7, there’s no point in going home to bed.”

“There’s a party on those new flats near the footbridge. We could go there”

“How do you know?”

“It’s where I was before I came to find you”. 

We made our way there and had to buzz about 6 times before someone let us through the gate. We climbed this massive flight of stairs, and all the way I’m thinking ‘there’s gonna be no one here, it’s 4:30 in the morning’, but as we climbed the stairs, a dull thudding noise from above us slowly turned out to be a noisy sound system blasting music. By the time we got to the top floor, low and behold, things were still in full swing. I lost Mat practically the second we walked through the door, but there were a couple of people I knew from lectures so it was okay. The music was a bit too loud and things were a bit too druggy for me, but I managed to entertain myself for a while. Nevertheless, after about half an hour, I was totally bored, and the temptation to leave took over. But before I could do that, I needed to locate Mat.

I looked around for a while, until eventually I found her out on the terrace. She was kneeling on the floor laughing pretty hard. It was that really infectious kind of laughter, manic but overpowering.

“What’s so funny?”

No response came, just more frantic laughter. Before long I was laughing too, I couldn’t help it. I was so tired, and things had been so tense earlier, I guess it was a release of some kind. The sun had started to rise and the sky was a familiar shade of orange. It’s quite a height out there on the terrace and the views are pretty amazing at the best of times, but with that morning sunrise foregrounded by the trees; the scene was overwhelming. There we both were, laughing our heads off at seemingly nothing; bathed in this blur of pea-green and tangerine.

But she was laughing a little bit too hard; and she was taking these long strained breaths. It was as if she was having trouble breathing. Then I caught her eye properly and there was something disturbing about the way she looked at me; there was this terror lurking behind the raucousness of her laughter. The tears streaming down her cheeks. And suddenly it made sense; she was in hysterics. I suddenly felt cold.

“Matilda. What’s wrong? What have you taken?”

I grabbed her by the shoulders and begged her to stop. She kept laughing and her breathing kept getting more strained. These long, shrill intakes of breath between fits of laughter. I looked around for a paper bag or something. I’m not trained to deal with people who are panicking. I was convinced it was some sort of overdose, or drug induced mania.

“Help” I shouted.

Naturally, nobody could hear me over the music. I shouted again and again. I ran back inside, but my friends had gone and it was so dark and loud, and everyone else was too pissed or stoned or whatever; no one could speak let alone help. Then I went back out on to the terrace, and saw her standing up, leaning on the balcony rail, looking over the side, still shrieking with laughter. I rushed over and she pointed down to the ground below, screaming.

And there I saw it, a speck on the ground a couple of hundred feet below us. The Northern Echo ran a short news story about it a couple of days later. In the early hours of May 25^th, an as yet unidentified male in his early 20s jumped or fell some 100 feet from the balcony of a private residence near to Durham city centre. He was pronounced dead at the scene. Police are not treating the death as suspicious.

I haven’t seen Mat since.

Machiavelli & Me.

There is no necessary or predictable relationship between what happens to us and what we deserve.

Sitting here in this dingy, damp, cellar; a blunt pencil and few scraps of paper are the only things staving off complete insanity. My captor, a lanky 15 year old with a flick knife and an unfathomably disproportionate grudge, switched off the light before he locked me in here. Thankfully, there is enough moonlight seeping through the ventilation cover to allow me to commit my story to paper.

It was a Friday morning much like any other. I dragged myself out of bed, showered and made my way across town to my first lecture. I was all but sleepwalking, until a guy nearly got hit by a bus about 3 feet ahead of me. That woke me up a little; seeing someone come within inches of their death tends to do that. I made sure that he was OK. He seemed shaken up but appreciative.

I arrived at my lecture to find that it had been postponed until 2 O’clock that afternoon. This was most annoying as I had nothing to do for the next four hours. I reversed 180 degrees and set off to walk home; I needed to make the best possible use of my time, so I thought I’d go home and work on a philosophy essay.

I got back to my flat and switched on my laptop. My housemates weren’t in, but my essay was already a week late so the fewer distractions the better. I’d decided that to make up for the lateness of the submission, I’d spice it up a bit, with an elaborate analogy. Machiavelli & Human Psychology understood through the nuclear family.

Here is a segment of the essay:

In this paragraph we will consider an analogy in order to elucidate our understanding of Machiavelli’s theory of Human Psychology.

Jane’s parents are flying to Florence for a short break; they tell her that she is in charge for the weekend. She has the unenviable task of forcing her mischievous twin brothers to behave. Jane is 18, her brothers are 15.

How can she get them to behave? Unlike her parents she does not have the protection of tradition or custom? She is playing the power-game under the most naked and unfavourable conditions. Therefore she must be ruthless. She decides that fear is that best means with which to rule. After bidding farewell to her parents, she informs her brothers that she has acquired an x-rated magazine from the local corner shop.

“If you take one step out of line”, she tells them calmly, “I will hand this to mum and dad and tell them I caught you reading it together!”

The boys are horrified. They each react differently. One screams at her, tells her that it is unfair. He is deeply distressed by the situation he finds himself in. She banishes him to his bedroom for the night.

The other, more astute brother immediately becomes sycophantic, promising to be on his best behaviour. She rewards him by letting him play on his Xbox and they share a tub of ice cream.

This analogy highlights the four emotions identified by Machiavelli as being central to humanity. Machiavelli identifies the ease with which feelings of hate, love, fear and contempt can be activated as the reason humans are easy to control. The first brother feels fear, hatred and contempt; he is harder to control and will eventually become uncontrollable. The second brother feels fear and love; the ideal combination of emotions with which one can rule according to Machiavelli. In the following section we will discuss Machiavelli’s view on the relationship between morality and politics…

What with working for a few hours, it was almost time to go to my rescheduled lecture. My housemate returned, he’d decided to come home and watch a DVD. We chatted for a while and I left.

Knowing that time was not on my side I decided to take a shortcut, past the old swimming baths. The path was narrow and secluded, but it took 10 minutes off the journey. As I progressed up the hill, I noticed a tall figure making their way towards me from up ahead. As I got nearer I could make out more of the character, but still not enough.

“It’s you” he said, accusingly.

“Er, yes. It is me…” I laughed nervously and tried to brush aside his assertion, but deep down I could tell that this guy was pretty angry.

“You’re the one who wrote the story. You’re the bastard who ruined my weekend”. He could have only been about 15.

“Which story do you mean?”

“The story. The bloody story with the porno-mag! Who do you think you are trying to embarrass me like that? You didn’t even give me a name! You left me in that bedroom to rot, now I’m going to do the same to you”

I didn’t know what was happening but I knew I wanted to leave. I tried to push my way past him and muttered “leave me alone”. It was dawning on me who this person was and I didn’t like it.

“Oh, no you don’t mate” He said, and brandished a small but intimidating knife that he had been concealing up his sleeve. I made a run for it, but didn’t get far before feeling a blunt thump on the back of my head and blacking out.

When I awoke I was in this cellar and he was standing there in front of me. I pleaded my innocence. He was unrelenting in his anger.

“What? So you think you can just go around writing stories without fully fleshing out the characters.” I tried to explain to him that it was just a little metaphor in a silly formative essay. He told me that it didn’t matter, I needed to learn. He was teaching me a lesson.

“You can’t put people through that sort of thing if you aren’t even going to put a few posters on their bedroom walls. You failed to include the smallest amount of character development before putting my brother and I through that embarrassing ordeal. You didn’t even give us names, for Christ’s sake.”

He switched the light off and it was a few minutes before my eyes adjusted to the darkness. It must have been late. I could see Gilesgate roundabout through a small hole in the ventilation cover, and there were barely any cars on it.

I had the eerie sense that he was still silently standing outside the door, so I pleaded with him and told him I was sorry, but he did didn’t reply. I knew that he was giving me time to think about things. I had no time for thoughts, only feelings.

Hatred. Fear. Contempt.

In the end I will be rescued by Joseph David Webster. Born in Rotherham on the 26^th of February 1984, Joseph considers mountain biking and non-mainstream indie-rock to be his two primary interests. He rarely wears the colour red as he thinks it makes him look pale. He has short brown hair and has a birthmark resembling a bird on his right thigh. Earlier today he was almost hit by a bus.

“There is no necessary or predictable relationship between what happens to us and what we deserve”.